Soccer Archives - Page 16 of 17

Why do Some Sports Play Through Bad Weather and Others Don't?

Dear Sports Fan,

Why do I always hear about baseball games being delayed or rescheduled due to a light rain and yet soccer games continue around the world in a downpour?

Thanks,
Jesse

Sport, baseball. Hardest material, a wooden bat. Plays through rain? No.

— — —

Dear Jesse,

Thanks for the question! It’s true that sports react differently to the elements. I’m tempted to try to explain this culturally. I’m not the biggest fan of baseball, so it would be fun to bash them for not playing in the rain. A more fair explanation would probably explain that weather affects the trajectory of balls and that this is much more dangerous with a small, hard ball traveling at 95 miles per hour than a big soft ball flying at 35 miles per hour. What is most interesting to me is trying to explain the general phenomenon of why some sports play through bad weather and others don’t and if possible, coming up with a rubric that explains why.

There seem to be two or three simple rules that we can abstract to to explain how each sport deals with weather.

If the sport is played inside, there should almost never be a weather related delay.
The harder the hardest substance used in normal game-play is, the less likely the sport will be to play through bad weather.

Let’s see how these work in practice.

Pro or College Basketball, Volleyball, Boxing, Hockey, Ping Pong — all played inside and all safe from weather delays.

Soccer, Football, Rugby, Cross Country Running — all played outdoors and the hardest material involved is no harder than a soft, inflated leather ball. Their surfaces are all grass or dirt. The only weather that will stop these games is a lightning storm in the direct area of the game.

Golf, Baseball, Tennis, Cricket — all played outdoors and the hardest material is significantly harder than leather. Golf has metal clubs and hard resin balls, baseball has wooden bats and hard leather balls, tennis is played on concrete with fiberglass rackets, and cricket has wooden bats and a hard leather ball.

These rules work pretty well to predict whether a sport will play through bad weather or not with only a few exceptions. You may have noticed that football is in the play through the weather category despite its helmets being much harder than an inflated leather ball. Two possible explanations for this are that historically the helmets were made of soft leather or that because the helmet is attached to the body, its danger is not modified by the weather. Of course if we allow the historic state of sports to enter into the equation, we’d have to admit that tennis used to be played only on grass and clay and that the rackets used to be made of wood. Then again, women’s tennis attire once “included a bustle and sometimes a fur” according to one history of tennis. Basketball’s treatment of weather is modified by its setting. If you are in an outside basketball league, played on concrete, games will be canceled if it is raining. Cycling admittedly breaks this rule entirely. They ride in the rain even though their bikes are made of fiberglass and the roads are made of road. I can only explain this by saying that cyclists are a little crazy and that no rule is perfect.

These rules should help you if you ever need to know whether your tickets to a sport are in danger of being rained out or if you decide to invent a new sport and want to set reasonable weather expectations.

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

Why Do People Like Soccer?

There’s a lot said about soccer by people who don’t like it: it’s too low scoring, it’s too slow, it’s too liberal, people are diving constantly, etc. Supporters of soccer or football as it’s called in the rest of the world call it “the beautiful game” and flock to it in record numbers. As someone who will happily watch or participate in virtually any sport from water polo to olympic handball to Australian rules football^[1] I’m not particularly interested in advocating for one sport over another but I will list some of the reasons I think people like soccer.

— — —

To celebrate and prepare for the World Cup in Brazil, Dear Sports Fan is publishing a set of posts explaining elements of soccer. We hope you enjoy posts like Why do People Like Soccer? How Does the World Cup Work? Why Do Soccer Players Dive so Much? What is a Penalty Kick in Soccer? and What are Red and Yellow Cards in Soccer? The 2014 World Cup in Brazil begins on June 12 and ends on July 13.

— — —

People Like Soccer Because it is Incredibly Hard to Score

This may be counter-intuitive because one of the complaints of many people about soccer is that it’s too low scoring but I think it’s a feature not a defect. One of the primary reasons why people enjoy watching sports in general is to watch athletes do things that they themselves could not do. For that reason, the harder it is to score in a game, the more wonder scoring should create in its fans when it does happen. And it is hard to score in soccer — this is what an attacking player in soccer faces:

First they take away the most dextrous limbs at your disposal, your arms. No using your hands or arms.
Then they put a ball on the field that, if you kick it hard enough, bends and dips in all sorts of fairly unpredictable ways.
Controlling this ball without using your hands means that your top speed with the ball is way slower than a defender can run without the ball.
Finally, they allow one player, the guy who is there with the sole purpose of preventing you from scoring, to use his hands.

All of these difficulties (and we didn’t even mention the offside rule) make scoring an impressive feat.

People Like Soccer Because of the Buildup Before the Release

One of the unexpected adjunct pleasures of watching a game where scoring is so rare is that by the time a team does score, it’s fans have built up an enormous store of pent up will, rage, and yearning that explodes into celebration to a degree unknown in higher scoring sports. According to Chris Anderson and David Sally of Slate Magazine the average number of goals in an English Premiere League soccer game is around 2.6. In a ninety minute game a team will usually score one or two goals. That’s a ton of time for fans root without having a celebratory release. Compare this to sports like tennis where the play rarely lasts 30 seconds or basketball where a team must shoot every 24 seconds and scores a little less than half the time it shoots. I can say that the goal the United States scored against Algeria after ninety scoreless minutes of a 2010 World Cup game that the U.S. needed to win was one of the most glorious sports moments of my life.

There are two downsides to this characteristic of soccer that I would be remiss not to mention: one is that the despair of seeing the opposing team score is equally acute. The second is that, mostly in the past in Europe but still once in a while in other parts of the world, the extremity of emotion combined with a heady mixture of alcohol, antagonism unrelated to sport, and unwisely designed stadiums can lead to rioting. In 1989 in Sheffield, England 96 people were killed and another 700 plus were injured in a riot of this sort. Called the Hillsborough disaster, these deaths did lead to significant reform in England.

People Like Soccer Because of its Teamwork and Fluid Play

This is probably also related to the advantages that not being able to use your hands give defense has over offense but soccer teams play more as a team than almost any other sport. It’s not unusual for there to be a string of ten or even fifteen passes that lead up to a goal. There are absolutely star players but even they exist within a team frame-work. For every star striker (player who exists solely to score) there is a star playmaker whose greatness is seen most clearly in the passes he or she makes to teammates. If you watch a soccer match in person, try to sit farther up than you imagine is ideal. From there you will get a good view of how the twenty-two players on the field move in swoops and cycles. The play continues this way almost unimpeded for ninety minutes. As the patterns that players make (overlapping runs on the wing, forwards retreating to pick up a pass, etc.) make their way into your brain as tactics instead of the aimless wandering you first might perceive them as, you will come to appreciate them.

Some Other Reasons People Like Soccer

More than other sports, national soccer teams have clearly defined historic styles that usually remain constant and which relate in some way to the national character (or at least are thought to.) The Brazilians dance with the ball like no one else and win, the Italians play rugged, dirty, defensive soccer and win, the British lose gallantly, the Germans play disciplined soccer and win a lot, and the Dutch play the most beautiful soccer in the world and lose consistently in the end.
There’s less difference between the men’s and women’s game than in most sports. Although I won’t often watch women’s basketball, I will watch the U.S. Women’s National team whenever it’s on. The rules of the game are almost identical and I get as much enjoyment from watching their games as I do the Men’s team.
The U.S. Men’s team is not that good. I’m one of those weird fans that enjoys watching bad teams, but even people who don’t have that problem might enjoy a break from being an overwhelming favorite like the U.S. is in many international competitions.
Most people in the world (even here in the United States) grew up playing soccer so they’ve internalized the game more than other sports.

There are some reasons why I think people like soccer. Do you like soccer? Why?

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

Although I will admit I do not understand the rules that the name of that sport refers to↵

How Does Overtime Work in Different Sports?

Dear Sports Fan,

How does overtime work in different sports? I’ve been watching more hockey this year and I know that overtime in the playoffs is different from overtime in the regular season. Are other sports like that too?

Thanks,
Sonja

Dear Sonja,

To quote the great Kanye West in honor of his latest album, “like old folks pissing, it all Depends.” Each sport has its own approach to how to proceed with competition if the score is tied after regulation time has expired. Like you say about hockey, even within each sport it can differ depending on whether the game takes place during the regular season or the playoffs. So while it may seem like I’m getting paid by the number of times I write “sometimes” in this post, that’s just the way overtime works.^[1]

In general, extra time formats in sports (overtime) fall into a few buckets:

Sudden Death: the most exciting two words in sports. This format is so dramatically named because the first team to allow their opponent to score loses the game immediately. This adds a heightened layer of tension that’s pretty much unparalleled. Sudden death doesn’t necessarily mean
Sports: hockey, soccer (sometimes), football (sometimes), baseball (kind of), golf (sometimes).
Extra Period: This is essentially when an extra period of time is added and whoever is leading at the end of that extra period wins. It still involves added tension but doesn’t quite have the audience on a knife’s edge, since a single score doesn’t necessarily dictate the outcome.
Sports: basketball (always), baseball (again kind of. In baseball they play a full inning, so essentially the team that has its turn to hit first in the inning is playing Extra Period but the team that hits second can be in a Sudden Death type situation.)
Shootouts: The ultimate Mano a Mano sports showdown. Each team picks its best payers (five in soccer, three in hockey) and each one gets a chance to score on the opposing team’s goalie. Some dismiss it as a gimmick but – for the viewer – there are few things more dramatic than seeing an athlete alone on the field or rink with the weight of the entire game on their shoulders. Of course if the shootout is tied after the allotted players have shot, you get a sudden death shootout, where the first player to miss costs his or her team the game.
Sports: Hockey, soccer (in both cases this assumes you make it through the extra periods with neither team scoring and in the case of hockey that the game is during the regular season)
None: Although increasingly rare, there are some situations in sport where if a game is tied at the end of regular time the two teams shake hands, walk off the field, and neither team wins. It’s a tie! In the old days in soccer two teams that ended the game in a tie would go home, rest up, and play again in a few days in order to get a result.

You may have noticed that we haven’t covered football at all in this post. That’s because football is so absurdly complicated in its overtime rules that it is deserving of its own post. The college football rules are different than the professional ones… which differ from the regular season to the playoffs.

Thanks for your question and look out for a football overtime post soon,
Dean Russell Bell

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

Editor’s note. Mister Bell is not being paid at all for this post.↵

Why is Soccer a Summer Sport in the United States?

Dear Sports Fan,

Why is soccer a summer sports in the United States, but an autumn/winter sport in most of the rest of the soccer-playing world (i.e., the rest of the world)? I’ve long associated soccer with drizzle and mud and it’s bizarre to see it played in the hot sun on a dry pitch. There’s no overlap with players as far as I know–the big stars play in Europe exclusively.

Thanks,
Guy

Dear Guy

When I was a kid, I played on a “traveling” soccer team and I seem to remember that soccer season was fall and spring… although we also played indoor soccer in the winter… and went to soccer camps in the Summer. So I guess I do remember growing up playing soccer year round although when it comes to scholastic sports in America, soccer is a fall sport ending in early winter.

The most popular soccer league in the world, the English Premier League runs from August to May so you’re right, that’s mostly Fall/Winter with a little bit of Summer and Spring peeking out the sides. Major League Soccer (MLS is America’s attempt at professional soccer,) which is not as popular as other soccer leagues around the world – does have a summer-heavy schedule (March to December,) though the playoffs extend well into the fall and winter.

The reason for that is simple: competition. Not athletic competition, mind you – but TV competition. The summer is traditionally a TV sports dead zone, when baseball is in full swing but only truly captivating to a subset of the population, basketball and hockey are ending and, every two years, the Olympics may capture the nation’s attention for a couple of weeks, depending on the charisma of that year’s girl’s gymnastics team. Most importantly, American football – the dominant sports TV franchise in America, even though soccer (or football, as the rest of the world calls it) is the most popular sport in the world – is completely off the air.

So it makes sense that, in trying to make professional soccer a competitive economic enterprise in America – where TV viewership is the key – the powers that be focused on that dead zone and scheduled the bulk of the season for the summer.

Hope this answers your question – certainly I think it’s a more responsive answer than my gut reaction, which was to say that you associate soccer with cold and rainy weather because you’re used to watching soccer in England where – to indulge an ignorant American stereotype – everything from warm beer to Marmite is associated with cold and rainy weather.

Thanks,
Dean Russell Bell

Are Predictable Sports More Popular?

Dear Sports Fan,

Are more predictable sports more popular than unpredictable sports?

Thanks,
Tyrone

Dear Tyrone,

Great question! I’m not sure what the answer is, or if there even is a clear correlation between popularity and predictability, but it’s something I’ve often thought about it. Let’s explore this together!

The four major sports in the United States are Football, Basketball, Hockey, and Baseball. In two of those sports, Football and Basketball, college competition is close in popularity to the professional leagues, so we will include those in our discussion. The first thing to do is establish the order in which these sports are popular. I have my own favorites, but television ratings should provide a pretty good guide to the true popularity of the sports. There’s a good post on this at www.spottedratings.com which looks at the relative ratings of the championships of the six sports leagues. In order, they are:

Popularity (Television Ratings)
1. NFL Football
2. NBA Basketball
3. College Basketball
4. College Football
5. Major League Baseball
6. National Hockey League^[1]

Now we come to the more interesting piece of this which is to attempt to rank these in order of predictability. There are two main factors that play into this — the format of the playoffs and the elements of the sport itself. The key difference in format is between single elimination^[2] and a playoff series.^[3] As you might imagine, the playoff series creates much more predictable results because it allows a better team to have an off night and still end up the champion.

Single Elimination
NFL Football
College Basketball
College Football

Playoff Series
NBA Basketball
Major League Baseball
National Hockey League

It’s a bit harder to figure out how the elements of each sport affect their predictability. I’m sure there are thousands of factors that effect this, but let’s just chose one to think about — the average score. High scoring games would seem to be more predictable by the same logic that playoff series are — they make it less likely that a single bad moment, a single mistake, or a single moment of unusual brilliance will change the eventual result.

Scoring (from high to low)
NBA Basketball
College Basketball^[4]
College Football
NFL Football
Major League Baseball
NHL Hockey

If we combine these two factors^[5] we end up with the sports in this order.

Predictability (format, scoring)
NBA Basketball (+3,+3) 6
Major League Baseball (+3,-2) 1
National Hockey League (+3, -3) 0
College Basketball (-3,+2) -1
College Football (-3, +1) -2
NFL Football (-3, -1) -4

This model, because of its simplicity, doesn’t quite match up with my instincts about the sports. For instance, my gut tells me that College Football is actually significantly more predictable than College Basketball, there’s a reason the College Basketball tournament is called “March Madness,” but I think it’s mostly correct. For evidence of the overall directional correctness, consider that there have been twelve different NFL champions in the last twenty years but only eight in the last twenty years of the NBA. The NFL engenders clichés like “any given Sunday” to express its unpredictable nature, whereas the NBA is known for its dynastic teams, the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers^[6] and Michael Jordan who won six championships with the Chicago Bulls during eight years in the 1990s.

I’m still not sure if there is any clear connection between predictability and popularity, but it at least seems obvious that unpredictability is not harmful to a sport’s popularity. So when you hear silly stories about how horrible it is that College Football doesn’t have a playoff like College Basketball does, and people like Barack Obama get involved, just make sure they don’t use “getting the best team to be the champion” as a rationale. Not only is a single elimination playoff notoriously unpredictable, but many of the most popular sports have the least predictable results!

Thanks for your question,
Ezra Fischer

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

It’s figuratively physically painful for me to see hockey at the bottom of this list since it has clearly the best playoffs of any sport. It is worth mentioning that some of its finals games are televised on a mildly obscure cable channel with a relatively smaller distribution.↵
if your team loses a single game, it’s out↵
like you played rock-paper-scissors as a kid, this is best x out of y where x = y/2 + 1↵
The college game is eight minutes shorter and has a longer shot clock which allows a team to hold the ball longer before being forced to take a shot.↵
Let’s do give a sport +3/-3 for format and +3 to -3 for scoring to get a ranking from 1-6 overall↵
These two teams alone have won 33 of 65 NBA championships.↵

The Unwritten Rules of Sports

Dear Sports Fan,

In relation to the inquiry “Why aren’t the Rules the Rules?“, what is your take on the series of conduct breaches in the recent Angels/Tigers skirmish? Everyone seems to be making a big stink about baseball’s “code of unwritten rules” and how a number of them were violated (and enforced) in the game: lingering at plate after hitting a home run; trash talking; spoiling a no-hitter with a bunt; intentionally pitching a fast ball at the batter’s head (okay that may be a real violation for which the pitcher was suspended). If this is unsportsmanlike conduct, then why aren’t there written rules to prevent such behavior? Why has the Angels/Tigers’ pissing match of retribution been defended by the players and coaches and justified by some MLB commentators after the fact? And if a pitcher is an inning away from a no-hitter, is the opposing team really supposed to just hand him the game?

Thanks,

Andrew Young

Dear Andrew,

This is a bit dated now because the game you mention was several weeks ago, but the question, at least in baseball, is always timely. Baseball fans and writers love talking and writing about the unwritten rules of their sport. That’s true for hockey too – both of them have a tradition of self-enforcement of an unwritten “code” which, as Geoffrey Rush would say, are more like “guidelines” anyway. There aren’t written rules about these things because they’re too subjective – ie, how can you tell whether a pitcher definitely threw at a hitter, how can you tell that a player bunted for a base hit to break up a no-hitter and not just because it was the only way his team could get on base?

That’s where the code comes in.

The code, in both baseball and hockey, has to do with two things: respect for your opponent and, therefore, the game, and policing dangerous play. In the game you reference, the two went hand in hand.

But, as in all things, context matters. You generally shouldn’t bunt to break up a no-hitter, but only if it’s blatant that you’re doing it to break up a no-hitter – ie, if you’re losing by enough that you’d enforce a mercy rule if it were little league, or you haven’t bunted since the first Bush Administration. If you’re down by three and known as a speedy guy who sometimes actually bunts to get on base, you can usually get away with it.

It’s acceptable to throw at a hitter if the opposing team’s pitcher did the same to one of your teammates – but it’s never ok to throw at the head.

The code is pretty clear that you finish your home run trot in a timely fashion and don’t stand there admiring it, but who’s to say what’s timely? Staring down the pitcher after you hit a home run – as happened in this case – is a clear no-no.

When all of these self-enforcement mechanisms fail, baseball resorts to the ultimate in phony tough guy moments: the bench-clearing brawl. Baseball is different than hockey cause when hockey players brawl, you can tell it’s a brawl. For instance, they actually make physical contact with people. When baseball players brawl, it’s like a swarm of electrons meeting at midfield. They get really really close but 99 percent of the time they move away before there’s any actual contact. If someone actually lands a punch, it’s news – if a 70 year old bench coach is tossed on his ass by a 35 year old athlete it’s a clip that will be replayed for decades.

So while there are some legitimate reasons for these rules to exist – namely, helping people protect their teammates – these unwritten rules are really just another way for athletes, the reporters who cover them and the commentators who commentate on them (who are frequently former athletes) to make clear that they’re a part of a unique group of people who have their own special rules that other people just can’t understand.

Thanks,
Dean Russell Bell

Why is Soccer so Liberal?

Dear Sports Fan,

Can sports be liberal or conservative? Why does soccer seem so liberal?

Curious,
Nicholas

Dear Nicholas,

What an interesting question. Sports definitely carry political overtones that vary from time to time and culture to culture. For instance, I spent a semester in Cape Town, South Africa during college. Although things are slowly changing, the political/racial meanings of sport set during Apartheid were still present. Football (soccer) is a black sport in South Africa while Rugby is an Afrikaans sport.^[1] Cricket is also wildly popular although more so among the White/Coloured (it’s a technical term) population than among Black people. It’s all very complicated.

In the United States soccer is one of the more interestingly politically loaded sports. See this tongue-in-cheek article from Deadspin.com entitled “Soccer: The Liberal Plot to Destroy America.” Sure, NASCAR has a cartoonish identification with Southern conservatives, and golf is tight with the political party of the rich… but why is soccer seen as a liberal sport? There are two main reasons — one historical and one current.

Soccer as we know it in this country — with the youth leagues and the screaming parents on the sidelines and the “2-4-6-8 who do we appreciate?” — began in the late 60s and early 70s as part of the counter-cultural revolution. Football was too tightly associated with the traditional drink beer, marching band, date the cheerleader, join the marines and go to war life for pot-smoking, Vietnam war protesting, Woodstock going hippies. Soccer was an ideal sport to coalesce around because right at that time Johan Cruijff was ascending to his place as one of the best players of all time. He also happened to be making himself into a counter-cultural idol due to his unique style and radical (and out-spoken) ideas.

Although it’s been 40+ years, I think this explains much of the non-violent, everyone wins, liberal stereotypes about soccer. There’s another thing, something that’s even more true now than it was in the 70s. The best soccer in the world is not played in the United States. If you want to watch the best soccer in the world, you have to watch the English Premier League,^[2] the Spanish La Liga, or wait around for the big international tournaments like the World Cup or the European Championships. This is a big difference from Football (okay the rest of the world just doesn’t care) or Basketball, Hockey, or Baseball where the best players in the world come to our league to perform. Insofar as liberals are associated with a greater internationalism and conservatives are associated with isolationist tendencies, then it makes sense that being a soccer fan is seen as a liberal thing to do.

What’s funny about this (and this is far too large of a topic to cover here, so I’ll just nod towards it) is that soccer leagues in other countries are far more capitalist than our leagues. Players are not traded, they are “sold.” If a team does not do well it can be thrown out of the league and relegated to a lower league. Compare that to an NFL team like the Detroit Lions that has not had a winning season since 2000. Not only does it get to keep playing in the NFL, but they receive gobs of money from the other teams in the form of revenue sharing of television, merchandising, and ticket money.

One last bonus factoid that you can use at cocktail parties: in the late 1800s when football and baseball were in their infancy, football, the more physical sport, was played by the upper classes, and baseball was a lower class sport. Why? Well — if you had to work in a factory or a farm you certainly were not about to risk breaking bones playing football. Leave that foolishness to rich college boys!

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

Which is why it was so meaningful for Nelson Mandela to embrace the team during the 1995 Rugby World cup. I think this is the plot of that movie with the 5-10, 160 pound Matt Damon playing a 6-3 238 pound rugby player… I haven’t seen it.↵
Which starts their season today!↵

Why Aren't the Rules the Rules? (Part 2)

Dear Sports Fan,

Reading about the bad call in the Pittsburgh/Atlanta game last night reminded me of something I’ve always wondered. Whether it’s because the ref is looking the other way (literally or figuratively), or because of just plain human error, the rules in sports are often either not enforced, or not enforced correctly. But in many cases, it seems like people just consider that an integral part of the game! Especially given the increasing ability of technology to settle disputes, why not just come up with what the real rules ought to be, and then enforce them as thoroughly as possible?

Thanks,
Erik

— — —

(This is a continuation of an answer to this question. The first half was posted here.)

It will ruin the game:

There is some concern that adding technology to sports will ruin the game by making it too sterile or too slow. Taking the humanity out of the game could be a concern, but as much as people love discussing disputed calls at the water cooler, they also love talking about great (and terrible) performances, and great (and terrible) decisions on the part of the players and coaches. There will always be something to talk about. As for making the game too slow… uh… it could not possibly slow down the game as much as television time-outs, arguing with refs about calls, or in the case of baseball… adjusting your batting gloves, hat, glove, or cup compulsively over and over and over again.

It’s too expensive:

FIFA, the notoriously frustrating international federation of soccer refuses to add video replay to international competition because it would be too expensive for some of its member nations to implement. This is a curious reason since it seems like knowing ahead of time that you will actually know whether the ball crossed the goal line during the game shouldn’t change any element of tactics or strategy.

What do you mean “right?”

This is the heart of the answer to your question. A rule says, “it’s against the rules to trip an opponent” but does that mean “it’s against the rules to trip an opponent” or “it’s against the rules to trip an opponent if you get caught?” It’s clear from these two sports cliches which way the sports world leans: “it’s not a foul if you don’t get caught” and “if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.”

Sports, particularly baseball is all about cheating. The last twenty years have been shaped by steroids and HGH. Before that there were amphetamines called greenies. Before that teams regularly intimidated officials or just plain assaulted them when they didn’t like the calls they were getting. It’s well know that the 1919 World Series was fixed by a few players on the White Sox and there have always been unproven rumors that the 1918 one might have been fixed as well. Cyclists are jam-packed full of drugs. They have been for a long time but “tiny electric motors…?” That’s a new one.

Even if a player is clean when he steps onto the court, he or she is rarely clean by the end of the game. Some of the most memorable plays in sports history have been the beneficiaries of some incorrect or missed calls. In soccer there is the “hand of god” goal, in basketball, Michael Jordan’s famous shot to beat the Utah Jazz is an offensive foul. Watch the video and notice Jordan’s left hand on his defender’s hip… he definitely pushes off.

Jordan is not great in spite of pushing off, he’s great partially because he pushed off and didn’t get caught.

Another way to state the question is — do we really want to have the game called “perfectly?” Here’s an example of this in the non-sports world. We certainly have the technology to identify each car and driver and what road they are on. Why shouldn’t we simply fine people whenever they go over the speed limit? Why waste all the time, money, and talent of our police departments lurking around trying to catch people when we could just automate it? I know we’ve started doing this with running some red lights, but I think that if we tried to automate speeding tickets on a large scale there would be riots and political parties would shape up around the issue… and I’m not sure which would be worse! It’s the same with most sports — a totally policed game is a boring one.

Thanks for the fun question,
Ezra Fischer

Why Aren't the Rules the Rules?

Dear Sports Fan,

Thanks,
Erik

Dear Erik,

Great question! In fact, this is such an interesting question that I’m going to break my answer into a couple blog posts.

The bad call that you’re referring to is this one:

It won’t work:

Sports rules are complicated and the action happens very, very quickly. Assuming that there is no way that we’re going to be able to rework the rules to change something as integral as “if the catcher has the ball in his glove and touches the runner before he touches home plate, he’s out” then one has to wonder how technology will help. Setting aside video replay for a second, let’s look for another solution. Okay, so — let’s put a chip in the ball. Then, let’s put some material in the catcher’s glove such that the ball knows when it’s in the glove. Great — now we’re cooking with gas! Now we have to have either more material covering the runner’s uniform… and hands, arms, head, neck, etc. Or, I guess we could just monitor whether the glove is making contact by putting some sort of pressure meeter into the ball or glove. Except that won’t work because that glove could hit the ground, the ump, or the catcher’s own body. I’m not sure any of this will work, so let’s go back and examine video replay.

Video replay is the most common form of technology in sports. Football, basketball, hockey, even baseball (believe it or not) have some form of video replay in their rules. In baseball use of video replay is restricted to basically deciding whether a ball was a home run or whether it never left the ball-park, did leave but was subject to fan interference, or left but was foul (too far off to the side to count.) Other sports have more extensive video replay rules. You may have noticed NFL coaches comically struggling to get a little red flag out of their sock, pants, shirt, etc. and throw it onto the field — they are “challenging” the ref’s judgement and calling for a video replay. Every goal in hockey is reviewed by a team of video officials in Toronto. The NBA has been able to replay shots at the end of quarters and games and just recently added video replay for unclear out-of-bounds calls.

Tennis has a system called Hawkeye. This is probably as close as it gets to your suggestion. According to Wikipedia, “all Hawk-Eye systems are based on the principles of triangulation using the visual images and timing data provided by at least four high-speed video cameras located at different locations and angles around the area of play.” In tennis the rules are objective and there is technology which insures the calls are too. Or at least can be. The computer has not totally replaced the line-judges or the referee yet… although I could see a time in the not so distant future where they could.

Most other sports are not as tidy as tennis though. Take the call at home plate that started this discussion: here’s how Jonah Keri described it on Grantland.com

If you want to use replay to make a simple yes or no call, you won’t get unanimity. And no, the fact that Lugo acted as if he were out does not constitute iron-clad proof.

Watch the replay for yourself, with the sound off.

Here’s what I did see: Lugo starts his slide well in front of the plate. Home plate umpire Jerry Meals starts to make his safe sign just as Lugo touches home with his right foot. There’s no way Meals has time to process the play and rule that Lugo had already touched home. He’s also not looking at Lugo’s foot, but rather at the swipe tag. (It should be noted that Lugo did in fact touch home with his right foot the first time — the follow-up tap of home with his left foot was unnecessary.)

Either way, replay wouldn’t have resolved the issue. Not to the point where all parties, including a purple Clint Hurdle, would have been satisfied.

And, as Keri also points out, at the time of this call, the ump had been on the field working in a high-pressure environment for six hours and 39 minutes. Furthermore — even Baseball is a nice tidy game compared to Hockey or Football. No matter how many cameras, sensors, and computers you have, there is no chance in hell you’ll be able to figure out what happened at the bottom of a pile with thousands of pounds of angry football player fighting over the ball.

More tomorrow…
Ezra Fischer

What is the Most Challenging Ball Sport? The Least?

Dear Sports Fan,

What do you consider the most physically challenging sport that involves a ball? The least?

Thanks,
Crystal

— — —

Okay, so bocce is not the most physically challenging... but is it a sport?

Hey Crystal,

I’m glad you said “physically challenging” rather than simply “challenging.” That makes this a much easier question for me to answer because it rules out baseball. Baseball (only nominally a sport as far as I’m concerned) is extremely technically challenging but virtually no one would say it is the most physically challenging sport. I’m glad you specified that the sport should involve a ball because that rules out hockey, ballet, and cycling. All three of those sports are incredibly physically grueling often to the point of seriously damaging the people who play them.

The most physically challenging ball sport has to be water polo. I know I’ve mentioned water polo before so attentive readers may be thinking that I just have a thing for water polo. But seriously — imagine swimming and treading water for 32 minutes.^[1] That’s exhausting enough! Now add playing a sport which involves a lot of time treading water without your hands and arms and tons of times when you drive yourself up out of the water to catch, throw, and block the ball. To that add violence. Tons of violence. Here is an article from the Washington Post written during the 2004 olympics that describes this pretty well:

Water polo players launch themselves out of the water to shoot.

Through the murk of the water, you see elbows swung into guts, knees slammed into groins, hands yanking bathing suits into painful wedgies, guys simply swimming on top of an opponent and holding him under water until he fights his way, punching and kicking, to the surface. Technically, none of this stuff is legal, but the refs working the poolside allow a certain amount of leeway.

The least physically challenging sport is actually a harder question because being physically challenging is one of the elements that usually helps distinguish between a game and a sport. For instance, though many of you might think I was going to argue for golf as the least challenging sport, I would say that if you count golf as a sport, you should count bocce! And bocce is much less physically challenging than golf.^[2] No need to limber up to hit a ball hundreds of feet in bocce. No “walking the course” for 72 holes over four days. Bocce consists of throwing not that heavy balls not that far towards an even smaller, lighter ball.

cc-sabathia — One of the best five baseball players in the world.

If you exclude bocce, golf, pool, darts, and try to find a true sport sport which is pretty easy to play, then I think it’s probably got to be cricket. I don’t know that much about cricket but I do know that test cricket is played over up to five days. During each day “there are usually three two-hour sessions, with a forty minute break for ‘lunch’ and a twenty minute break for ‘tea’.” I am sure cricket takes an enormous amount of skill and it’s hard to argue that baseball (a sport where one of it’s best players looks like this) is more physically demanding… but…. well, what do you think?

Great question!
Ezra Fischer

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

There are four eight-minute quarters in water polo although because the clock stops on fouls and when the ball goes out of bounds, most quarters actually last around 12 minutes. Players will continue to tread water even when the clock has stopped. We hope.↵
Excluding cross-country bocce, of course!↵